NYC still behind on storm-proofing, restoration projects five years after Hurricane Sandy

By Greg B.Smith

|NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|

Oct 28, 2017 | 5:01 AM

Five years after the wild night Hurricane Sandy roared into town and tore up large swaths of the city, the fix is not yet in.

Billions of taxpayer dollars worth of rebuilding projects are still slogging along, with expected completion dates one, two or — in some cases — even five years away.

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Many projects have yet to begin.

The flood-proofing of some public housing developments is months and even years behind schedule. Upgrades to 17 of 42 public school buildings that were flooded during the storm are incomplete. Construction of floodwalls to protect Bellevue, Coler Memorial and Metropolitan hospitals from the East River won't start until next year.

Four of 12 moving bridges scheduled to have their electrical systems flood-proofed by year's end are months behind.

A resident mourns as she comes back to her destroyed home in Breezy Point, Queens after Hurricane Sandy struck New York. (Anthony DelMundo/for New York Daily News)

A waterfront greenway project in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to rebuild storm sewers and water mains was supposed to wrap up by year's end but "extensive subsurface work" pushed the deadline to June 2018, city officials said.

In fact, the Mayor's Office of Recovery & Resilience lists dozens of projects still under construction that have already passed their completion dates. And many other projects have yet to start.

That is the landscape five years after the night of Oct. 29, 2012, when a stunned city began experiencing the wrath of Sandy. When it was over, there were 44 deaths, 2 million people without power and $19 billion in property and infrastructure damage. Storm swell and howling winds destroyed huge sections of the Rockaways in Queens, cut a path of destruction across the outer edges of Brooklyn, and swamped Lower Manhattan.

The struggle to return to normalcy began immediately, coupled with a universally embraced demand that any recovery must include measures to rebuild a city that will withstand the next monster storm.

The year after Hurricane Sandy: See the storm's impact and recovery efforts

Most of this proposed renaissance was to be funded by the federal government, and by spring 2015, the Federal Emergency Management Administration had committed $13.5 billion to the state of New York. New York City got $5.8 billion of that.

Two and a half years after that agreement, work is underway — but much of this money has yet to be spent, a review by the Daily News has found.

FEMA awards this money with the agreement that the amounts are more or less set in stone and repairs must be completed within a set time period.

The city has twice appealed a FEMA decision that required that administrative costs connected to the repairs must be counted as part of the effort. A second appeal is pending, although city officials say FEMA has committed to working with them going forward.

Most of the NYCHA Housing that lost power in Coney Island, with exception of Carey Gardens, when Hurricane Sandy barreled through New York City. (Todd Maisel/New York Daily News)

Some big projects have wrapped up. The $341 million FEMA-funded replacement of Rockaway Beach's wooden boardwalk with a concrete update is complete. So is the flood-proofing of the massive E. 13th St. Con Edison substation that blew out during the storm. And the city last year activated a $250 million drinking water tunnel connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island to ensure supply is not interrupted in the event of another deluge.

But many more projects have fallen significantly behind schedule.

The reasons for delays of specific projects are varied. Sometimes the city made unrealistic estimates about when projects would be finished. Sometimes bureaucratic obstacles slowed things down. Sometimes unexpected circumstances surfaced during the design or construction phases.

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Take the city Housing Authority. In March 2015, FEMA handed NYCHA its biggest single award ever — $3 billion to repair and flood-proof buildings in 33 developments whacked by Sandy.

Sheila Traina talks on the phone next to her 40-year-old home that was destroyed by Sandy. (Mark Bonifacio/New York Daily News)

Most of these developments are located in low-lying areas of Brooklyn such as Red Hook and Coney Island, in the Rockaways in Queens, and along the East River in Manhattan. Post-Sandy, tenants went for weeks without electricity, hot water, elevators and working toilets.

As of today, the renovation of exactly one development is complete: the Lower East Side Rehab, one of NYCHA's smallest projects with just two six-story buildings.

Seventeen developments are in various stages of construction, but 15 more have yet to begin. All 15 were originally supposed to start construction in late 2015 or early 2016, internal NYCHA records obtained by The News show.

NYCHA has spent $623 million of the $3 billion, or about 20%. At the Red Hook projects, which were badly flooded and where tenants went nearly a month without electricity, NYCHA has so far spent $29 million of what will eventually be a $549 million upgrade.

Long time neighbors Linda Strong (l.) and Lucille Dwyer (r.) hug after seeing their homes destroyed for the first time since Hurricane Sandy hit Breezy Point, New York. (Julia Xanthos/New York Daily New)

The delays started with the nine months it took FEMA to actually release the money it had promised. Then one by one the estimated start dates fell by the wayside.

Joy Sinderbrand, NYCHA vice president for recovery and resiliency, says the preliminary estimates were based on incomplete plans that changed due to unforeseen obstacles. She expects the speed of the repairs will accelerate as NYCHA learns from its earliest forays into relocating infrastructure and flood-proofing buildings.

Ocean Bay Oceanside, for example, was originally supposed to be finished by this month. NYCHA has spent a little more than half of its FEMA budget there to date ($36.5 million of the $67.9 million total project cost).

The development is definitely in a better place. New generators — that will allow a return to power almost immediately after a storm — have been placed on the roofs of most buildings.

New York's damaged and flooded subways after Hurricane Sandy made landfall

But the money allocation is uneven. Across Beach Channel Drive is Ocean Bay's sister development, Bayside, where NYCHA has received both FEMA and federal housing money.

As a result, boilers at Bayside have been moved to the roofs, while Oceanside's will stay in the basement. Bayside will rely on portable flood walls that workers will install in the event of another big storm, and basement water pumps and electrical equipment have been raised up on concrete or sealed off throughout the development.

City hospitals have also spent millions on upgrades and flood-proofing, but much of the scheduled work is either ongoing or has yet to begin.

At the extremely vulnerable Bellevue Hospital, which sits right on the East River, the city Health & Hospitals Corp. has raised electrical switchgear from the basement, installed flood gates at the loading dock, and upgraded external fuel and oxygen tanks. But construction of an actual 500-year flood wall to protect the facility isn't scheduled to begin until next year and won't be done until 2022. That's also true at Coler on Roosevelt Island and Metropolitan in East Harlem.

A new generator planned for Bellevue's roof was too heavy, so its location had to be moved and reinforced with steel beams. Completion of major repairs — including elevating water and diesel pumps and medical gas lines above the 500-year flood elevation and hardening the tunnel protecting steam lines — won't be complete until sometime next year.

Bellevue's cooling and heating systems won't be moved to higher elevations until 2019.

Spokesman Robert de Luna said HHC applied "a phased approach" starting with "making urgent repairs and getting our facilities back up and running."

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Phase Two "focused on better preparing our facilities for future severe weather events," while the last phase will address "heightened preparedness for a possible storm the likes of which we've never seen — the proverbial 500-year storm."

The new Bush Terminal Pier Park is set to open in Sunset Park once it gets a clean bill of health from Department of Environmental Conservation. (COURTESY NYCEDC)

"Guaranteeing the safety of our patients and staff is our highest priority," he said.

A similar slow start hobbled repairs of the Staten Island Homeport, a former Navy base next to the Staten Island Ferry dock, and the city-owned Bush Terminal factory buildings on the Sunset Park, Brooklyn, waterfront. Both took a big hit during Sandy.

The city Economic Development Corp. initially signed its agreement with FEMA for $116.2 million in March 2015, but officials say a "calculation error" was discovered. On New Year's Eve, 2015, an amended agreement for $117.3 million was signed, and EDC didn't see the money for another seven months.

It then took another nine months for construction to start at the Homeport and 11 months for Bush Terminal construction to begin. Neither project is expected to be finished until December 2019.

A home waiting to be built by NYC Build It Back in Breezy Point on Oceanside. (Debbie Egan-Chin/New York Daily News)

The hurricane damaged the seawalls and shorelines of both Rikers Island and Hart Island, which contains Potters Field. In March 2015, FEMA agreed to commit $62.7 million to fix both.

This week these projects remain in the design phase, with a Potters Field completion estimate of Dec. 30, 2021, and Rikers by March 30, 2022 — nearly a decade after the night Sandy hit.

City officials say, in the end, the goal is to make the city a safer place in a world where no reasonable person believes a storm like Sandy will never happen again.

"The City has applied the many lessons learned from Hurricane Sandy to ensure that critical infrastructure is more resilient," said Seth Stein, a spokesman for Mayor de Blasio. "We are better prepared than ever to ensure that New Yorkers can have their emergency needs met during and immediately following future emergencies."